Thursday, 9 March 2017

In my last post I discussed the size and dimensions of my 'Standard' small baskets, so in this post I thought I would follow up with a look at what you can fit inside and give you an idea of what can be stored in my standard small baskets. If you follow me on Facebook or on Instagram you may have already seen this!

In these photos I have used my 'Arrow' basket (shown above) and if like me you live in a house with children I am sure you have lego all around the place!My children use the baskets, that over the years I have made for them to store their 'special' lego pieces in.You know the ones that are not the standard bricks, for example they have one basket specially for lego figures including all the odd arms and heads that some how we have accumulated over the years! So with the help of my daughter, who unfortunately is very camera shy so doesn't appear in any the photos, we decided to see how many normal lego bricks we could fit in one basket. Oh yes, we counted every single piece of lego that we fitted into the basket twice just to make sure we had counted correctly!!

We had only just begun filling in the above photo!

And here it is a short while later filled. Now we stopped before it was completely full to the brim as we thought there was already enough bricks in there to count! We then emptied it out onto an empty surface and were quite amazed at the amount we had fitted in!

And here it is! Every brick and piece of lego in the picture above came out of this basket.

610 pieces in total!!

And I must stress that they were of varying sizes but we did try and put as many of the normal size lego bricks in as we could find. And again for scale below is my hand reaching into the basket!

Hopefully this continues to give you more of an idea of the size and scale of my Standard Small baskets which can be found by clicking here and my Arrow basket can be found by clicking here, and the link to my blog post discussing the dimensions of these baskets can be found my clicking here!

Next up I will be introducing my new 'wider' baskets, I am very excited about these, so please do pop back very soon!

Tuesday, 17 February 2015

One of the things we realised looking back over the last year, was that as a family unit we tend to be at our happiest and most content when we are outside. It doesn't matter whether its at the beach, the woods, on the allotment or on the moor, it just seems to be that open space surrounded by nature suits us all. So with this in mind and the fact that the children are now at ages when they can keep walking for quite a while before the youngest says 'pick me up' we have been making a conscious effort to get outside as much as possible lately. Wrapped up warm, with a flask of hot chocolate for them and coffee for us and of course a treat of something sweet like cake we have already done quite a bit of walking this year. We are lucky enough to live on the edge of Dartmoor, which is a magical moorland that covers an incredible 954 square kilometers, so gives us plenty of space to explore! And with the first signs of Spring appearing and the prospect of warmer days to come I am really looking forward to our explorations as a family this year.

I buy fabric for lots of different reasons. Often for work, sometimes for a project for myself and family, and just recently I have been buying for dressmaking, something that I am very keen to get started on though haven't quite found the time yet! And sometimes I buy fabric because I just can't resist it! Sometimes I have no idea what I am going to do with the fabric but have an overwhelming sense of needing to have the desired fabric in my stash! And that is probably the reason why my fabric stash never seems to go down! As well as buying too much fabric I also like to have a good browse on line at all the latest fabrics and there are many good fabric collections around at the moment. So I thought I would show you a few of my favourites. And each one nicely fits into one of my categories of reasons to buy fabric! September Blue I can imagine making my daughter something out of it,Bye bye bird is a lightweight fabric making it perfect for dressmaking,Siamese Cats is something a little different and would probably be one to sit in my stash for awhile waiting for that perfect project andThe shape of Spring - Line up is a fabric that I can imagine incorporating into my work.Talking of work, 'A Crafty Hen' is currently closed while a take some time to play with my children, rest my poorly back and also to catch up with some custom orders, but I do hope to be back open very soon.

Friday, 9 May 2014

A Crafty Hen has had an extra flurry of interest over the last couple of days and it was so lovely to find the traffic had come from here a lovely Spanish blog called Eternamente Flaneur. This lovely blogger has included three of my Storage baskets, my yellow 'Free as a Bird' baskets and also my Black and White basket in two lovely storage and nursery combination ideas. It's so nice to see people visualizing my work in this way. I just wish I could cut my images out as well as she has done!!

Tuesday, 26 November 2013

A few weeks ago I was invited to Jane Foster's book launch at her new studio and lets just say I was very excited! I have been an admirer of Jane's work ever since I stumbled across her vintage fabric cushions on ebay a good few years ago. She has a stunning collection of vintage fabric including a lot of Luicenne Day's classic prints which she often showcases on her blog and it was for that reason I become a keen follower of Jane's work. One of Jane's other passions is screen printing and she cleverly combines vintage fabric and her screen prints to produce gorgeous soft toys, which she sells along with her other work worldwide. She is a 'handmade' business success story, the sort of success that myself and many others with handmade businesses dream off. And the story of how she got where she is today is one that many of us can relate to. Jane started selling her vintage fabric cushions and vintage finds whilst still teaching and it was the success of how popular her stuff was that finally convinced her to give up teaching. Along with the help of her partner, Jane set up a studio in her home, working whilst also bringing up their young daughter, juggling the care between her and her partner which meant working late into the evenings. It's clear that it's taken a lot of hard work and determination to get where she is today. And it was lovely to see her partner and daughter sharing in the excitement of her latest project her new book 'Fun with Fabric' and also in the delight of having her first ever studio away from home! Her new space is amazing and what really struck me was how she had different areas for the different aspects of her work. A space to sew, an area to screen print and a packing area, every one as inspirational as the last and I can clearly see the benefits of having these different spaces to work in and how much smoother they can make the day to day running of a business but I can only dream of having this much space. The other thing that really stood out was how strong Jane's branding is. I read a lot of articles before setting up 'a crafty hen' all full of advice of how to start a business and the importance of branding came high up on the list of priorities but I couldn't really understand it at the time, surely having a good item that sold well was the main concern! But standing in Jane's studio it suddenly become clear and it got me thinking!

Last year the thing that I got asked the most was 'Could I please make my storage baskets in a larger size!'. So I took ...

Hello and welcome!My name is Jenny and I'm the maker behind the label 'A Crafty Hen'. This is my blog where I document my work and share things that inspire me in my everyday life. It is also the place where I like to share other items made by hand that I find.